


A Secret About a Secret

by honey_wheeler



Category: The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Post-WWI
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 07:39:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10381788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honey_wheeler/pseuds/honey_wheeler
Summary: Her hands are rougher now, her body softer and her voice warmer, but she’s still the Mary who quivered with joy when the crocus bloomed, and who bloomed for him just the same with a few soft words and some patient coaxing, who trusted him as implicitly as Soot and Captain ever did.Dickon remembers how Captain rumbled with pleasure when he was stroked. He can’t help wondering if Mary would do the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thefairfleming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefairfleming/gifts).



It’s just as it used to be.

Dickon should feel guilty for even thinking such a thing, let alone feeling it deep in his marrow as he does. There’s very little that’s the same as it was, with half the servants gone in the war, with Mr. Craven as ill abed as any man Dickon’s ever seen, with poor Colin dead and buried in a field somewhere in France and Dickon’s injured leg unlikely to ever bear his full weight again. It should seem disloyal to feel his heart seize with recognition every time he enters the little garden that’s more wild and overgrown and beautiful than ever.

It’s only that it’s Mary who made everything what it was then.

She’s as different as everything else, a woman grown with a woman’s troubles shadowing her face and slowing her stride, but here in the garden she feels just the same as the Mary she was, _his_ Mary, though he’d barely dared to think her so, so above his station was she. The war has a way of making such distinction meaningless, though, and once he’d let himself remember the way she always felt his, from the moment that Martha first spoke of her, it became the only way he could think of her. Her hands are rougher now, her body softer and her voice warmer, but she’s still the Mary who quivered with joy when the crocus bloomed, and who bloomed for him just the same with a few soft words and some patient coaxing, who trusted him as implicitly as Soot and Captain ever did.

Dickon remembers how Captain rumbled with pleasure when he was stroked. He can’t help wondering if Mary would do the same.

She’s not a beautiful woman; Dickon’s seen enough of life to know that. If he’s objective about it, he’d have to admit she’d looked awful when he first returned, as gray and pinched and brittle as Martha said she’d been when she arrived as a child. Mr. Craven’s care has taken a toll on her, as sick as he is. The rest of the household thinks her deep in mourning for Colin, as they were to be married upon his return, but she’d confessed the truth to Dickon one twilight, as they worked together to clear beds grown crowded with weeds. She’d never quite wanted to be Colin’s bride, she said, only it all seemed to happen without her say so, like it was something expected. Something owed.

Dickon had only nodded in understanding. Hadn’t he ended up in the army in much the same way? 

War had been the opposite of everything about him. Dickon never truly realized how much he dwelled in life and living, not until everything around him was death and destruction. There was no room for softness, for quiet, for green, growing life. They dug trenches and uprooted plants, killed everything around them with foul gases and shrapnel, including each other. When the mortar struck, Dickon had been glad. He’d seen men blown apart by shells, limbs cut through, crying out to a God gone missing, and still he welcomed that mortar, knowing that whatever it did to him would be worth getting out. It would be worth anything as long as he could come home.

“Your Yorkshire has come back,” she says one afternoon. She looks content on her knees in the grass, dirt under her fingernails, smudges on her cheeks, her hair escaping its confines in tendrils that curl like the ivy climbing the walls, nothing like the wan, worn girl she’d been just a few months ago. In the waning sunlight, she could almost be lovely.

“Has it?” The loss of the broad tones and elisions of his youthful tongue wasn’t a deliberate effort so much as a gradual change, the result of the years of schooling Mr. Craven sponsored for him, then the years in barracks, mimicking his fellow soldiers, learning their language as he’d once learned the language of squirrels and foxes and robins. He hadn’t realized until now how lonely that made him.

“Aye, tha’s been speakin’ like a right Yorkshire lad again,” Mary says with a grin, bumping him with her shoulder in companionable teasing. He’d always liked her attempts at Yorkshire, so intent and studious, like someone learning a real foreign language. He could tell her that she’s what brought his Yorkshire back, that she’s what’s bringing him back to life, the way they’d once done for this garden and for Colin. He could tell her that this is all he wants to do, for the rest of his life, share this garden with her. He could tell her that he loves her.

Instead he just smiles at her, nudging her in return and saying “It mun be th’ garden bringing it out.” Some things don’t need words to be said.


End file.
